1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information recording apparatus for recording digital information such as video, voice, etc., or an information recording/reproducing apparatus for the same, and more particularly, the present invention relates to an apparatus for limiting recording of the digital information onto a recording media upon authorities given by the copyright holders, etc.
2. Description of Related Art
Now that digital TV broadcasting is started, various private-use digital recording/reproducing apparatuses have been put on the market in such package media fields as movie software, etc. so as to cope with such digital broadcasting contents. In the near future, package software to be used for those apparatuses is also expected to appear on the market. The most attractive advantage of such digital broadcasting and digital recording apparatuses is that no or almost no quality degradation is recognized in the respective processes of sending/recording/reproducing. And accordingly, a serious problem comes to arise from such the advantage of those digital apparatuses; a lot of illegal copies are generated from the high quality digital information of the originals with use of those apparatuses, and are sold where the copyright holders do not know, so that no profit is turned back to the copyright holders.
In order to solve such the problem, U.S. Pat. No. 5,896,454 discloses a method for adding 2-bit copy control information to every information item. According to this method, the operation of a recording apparatus is controlled so that any one of the three choices “Copy Never”, “Copy Free”, and “Copy One Generation” is permitted or selected. The recording apparatus does not work when “Copy Never” is set and starts recording when “Copy Free” is set. If “Copy One Generation” of copies is permitted, the recording apparatus carries out the recording operation after rewriting this control information to “No More copies”.
If “Copy Never” is set for the copy control information when in broadcasting, a problem might arise; for example, when the user has a visitor while watching/listening broadcast contents, the user might miss the contents and have no means for watching/listening them later. For example, Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 2000-149417 (JP-A149417/2000) discloses a method for solving this problem by means of “Temporary Recording” even when “Copy Never” is set for the copy control information. This is a method for recording physically the desired information on a recording medium once, then the user is enabled to watch/listen the reproduced information for a predetermined period, for example, for just 90 minutes and the information is erased after that. This limit time is called as “retention period”. In other words, the method disables the information to be stored for a long time and used in other ways or purposes; it is just equivalent to enabling the broadcast content to be watched/listened with delaying a time within 90 minutes. This method can solve the above-described inconvenience of the user, since the recorded information is not stored for a long time, so that the copyright holder's advantages and/or profits can be protected. The “Temporary Recording” is often set in a hard disk recorder built in the receiver due to the characteristics thereof.
The similar “Temporary Recording” is available also when the copy control information indicates the “Copy One Generation”. For example, with provision of a limit, such as of 90 minutes, or the like, and while allowing the copy control information on the recording medium to indicate the “Copy One Generation” during the time limit, it is rewritten to the “No More Copy” after a lapse of the time limit. With this, it is also possible to obtain the effect of delaying the broadcasting, for example by 90 minutes, substantially.
After being rewritten into the “No More Copy”, it is impossible to copy the information from the disc onto the tape, for example, even if trying to do so. However, this sometimes gives inconvenience to the user. Then, subjecting to the condition that the information on the original recording medium is made to be non-reproducible, it is permitted to re-record (i.e., move) the information only onto other one recording medium. Thus, exchange-over of the recording media can be made, but without increasing the number of the recording media, i.e., without giving disadvantages onto the copyright holders.